Moderator: Welcome to today’s episode of True To Form with your host, CEO, and founder of Crystal Clear, Motivational Speaker and three Times Inc 500 entrepreneur Adam DeGraide. True To Form is a podcast that highlights leaders making headway in the aesthetic antiaging and elective medical industries. Learn from the experts to discover the secrets to success and the pitfalls to avoid when it comes to growing all aspects of your elective medical practice with the fearless, the outspoken, the one of a kind Adam DeGraide.
Adam: Hey everyone. It’s Adam DeGraide with True To Form, the leading podcast in aesthetic medicine, how to grow your practice. So excited you’re joining us today. Can’t wait to get this one going. I have Dr. Kevin Haney who is a board certified radiologist that is specialized in varicose and spider vein treatment for over 14 years. He is the medical director for Ozark Regional Vein Center, and his medical spa Renew Aesthetics is in Rogers, Arkansas. Unbelievable guy. You can find his website@ozarkvein.com. Also alongside of him, we have Alex Talley, who is the marketing director for Ozark Vein and Renew Aesthetics. He has a vast background in sales and business school and he has worked with Dr. Haney and the Crystal Clear team since 2017. Dr. Haney and Alex, welcome to True To Form with Adam DeGraide today. How are you guys doing?
Dr. Haney: Doing wonderful, how are you?
Adam: Trying to hold back the excitement.
Dr. Haney: I can barely.
Adam: It’s great to have you guys on True To Form. True to Form is awesome. We have some amazing doctors and amazing practice managers and marketing experts, and we are just so honored to have you guys join us here on True To Form today. So let’s get right into it. Dr. Haney, I’d love to, you know, first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself and would love to learn about what you know, what made you decide, you know, you wake up one day and you say you know I’m going to go to school and am going to become a doctor, and then how you know, what impacted you and why did you choose your specific area of medicine? So basically tell the folks who are listening right now a little bit about yourself.
Dr. Haney: All right. I went to medical school, honestly a little halfheartedly. I thought I was going to be a veterinarian and I was told that veterinary school is incredibly hard, incredibly expensive and hard to pay off the debt when you’re done. And then later on I considered med school. And so I had a roommate who was a pre-med major and knew everything about med school, and I was doing better than he was in the classes so I thought, “Hey, I’ll give it a try.” So I applied not for certain that I was going to go, and once I went, I enjoyed it and thrived and did really well. And so here I am good at everything I do.
Adam: That’s unbelievable. That’s amazing. So you originally wanted to be a veterinarian.
Dr. Haney: That was my plan, I was going to save the world of [inaudible] [00:02:57] veterinary disease I suppose. But instead I’m stepping up a-
Adam: That’s amazing. That’s absolutely amazing. And what school were you actually did you decide to go to, to get your degree?
Dr. Haney: For my medical school, I went to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. My undergraduate was a smaller state school, Arkansas Tech University. So I did my residency at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in Radiology. Yeah, I did enjoy radiology in the early days. It used to be a very personable, a very interactive place in the hospitals where all the docs came to. You’re the doctor’s doctor. So when you had a perplexing patient, all the docs would come down to radiology and you’d go over the cat scans and MRIs and they discuss the patient history and try to figure out what’s going on and why they’re sick.
As the technology advanced, unfortunately the social interaction went away, and so all of a sudden you’re sitting behind a computer screen. One day I remember being especially down thinking, you know, this is the fourth time I’ve called this doctor today, I wouldn’t know if I passed him on the street. I’ve never met him in person and I’m working on a patient I’ll never see 30 miles away from me. I texted the exam 30 miles away from me that I wouldn’t know if I passed him on the street, you know, calling this doctor that we’ll never meet to tell him that the person has an ACL tear or meniscus tear or whatever. And it just kind of was, it got very lonely. I’m a little more social than some radiologists.
Adam: You’re kind of just depressing me the way you’re describing it, the way you’re describing it does sound [Crosstalk] [00:04:42] I can imagine it was depressing. As you mentioned it was a blessing.
Dr. Haney: So yeah, I wanted to get back into taking care of patients and seeing people and having a, you know, having a social life outside of work. And so long story short, my wife had horrible venous disease that — we ended up getting treated although we had to drive three-and-a-half, four hours away to get it treated the modern way with lasers and modern technology. As I watched that radiologist do her venous treatment, I’m thinking this is what I need to be doing. And so I talked to him a little bit that I got this supplemental training and went and trained with the same folks that he trained with. And 14 years later I’m treating veins in a very, very busy venous practice.
Adam: Well, that’s amazing.
Dr. Haney: That’s how I started.
Adam: It’s always fascinating to me doctor, how people get into the fields and what they love starting off as a veterinarian then ended up in radiology and then realizing with a personal story with your wife going through that, realizing that you wanted to help people. That’s pretty powerful man to realize that. And I know you’ve been doing this, you said for 14 years, you also have an aesthetic division of your practice as well too. When did you decide to step into that field?
Dr. Haney: We started the aesthetic division about five years ago and it was — had been burning in my mind for a long time prior to that because patients kept asking for it. Venous patients as a whole are extremely happy. Once their [inaudible] [00:06:11] issues are gone, their pain is gone, their swelling is better; they’re also healed or bleeding stops, the chronic stops, and so they’re very pleased. And so they kept asking, you know, what can you do for these wrinkles or what can you do for yeah, the saggy skin or this or that or the love handles or whatever. So that was kind of the inspiration we’re in talking to other being as practices, they all seem to have the bigger practices, more successful practice had an aesthetic side as well. And so we began looking for the ideal staff to help start that from scratch. And Kendra was our choice for who to spearhead that. And so Kendra has been with me for I think five years last month and it’s gone from zero to a very busy practice now.
Adam: That’s amazing. That’s great. And then it also opened up the whole new world of marketing to you, which I know has been obviously a challenge over the years for many vein practices as well aesthetic practices. And you brought in an expert, somebody who I’ve grown to know and really enjoy listening to you. It’s Alex Tally who I want to bring into the conversation. Alex, how are you doing?
Alex: I’m doing great, man. Glad to be here.
Adam: Alex, for those listeners here, he’s a director of marketing and I guess you just got a recent promotion. You had no idea and assistant practice manager, so congratulations on that Alex, and hopefully you and the doc will talk about what that looks like for you personally in the future after this a podcast. But it’s a pleasure to have you on here. How did you get into the medical space and how did you end up working alongside Dr. Haney?
Alex: Yeah, well, thank you all so much first of all for having us on and, yeah, I have an interesting background. I had started in sales as I was going to college and sales kind of took over and some of you probably know how that goes. Then I’m still pursuing my degree very, very close, but going from marketing and I had — it moved down to Arkansas for promotion and I was selling household stuff at the time, I was selling beds. So I met Dr. Haney at the gym actually and thank God he saw some potential in me and saved me from the mattress and retail world so.
Adam: That’s a miracle that the doc saw you at the gym because I’ve seen you and I would not necessarily described you as Arnold Schwarzenegger, but at the same time, I mean you’re working towards it, right?
Alex: Oh absolutely. I’m pretty intimidating.
Adam: You’ve got to pump you up, right. That’s what they’re doing. So that’s amazing. So that’s where you guys met. Once again guys, and to our listeners out there, if you have a practice, people always ask Tim and I, you know, “Where do you find talent?” You find talent everywhere you are from somebody in the gym, you meet to somebody who checks you in at a restaurant to somebody who serves you to somebody who does customer service to you over the phone. If you are involved in recruiting and hiring and looking to develop and train and mentor great people, some of the best ways to do it is just to be observant and open to those you come in contact with every day. So right now at the practice, Alex, what are you currently your daily tasks look like? Give the listeners idea of what it looks like with you and Dr. Haney on a daily basis.
Alex: Oh, man. Well it’s a litany of things really. I keep everything updated. Of course we use Crystal Clear daily. We are not very active in the STC and so there’s monitoring of that. Scheduling patients. I’ve done the finance in the, in the past, so I help with that and sales and of course social media any content creation, anything like that. So I love my job because it’s never the same every day. It’s always something fun and different and it allows me to be creative. And I think we’ve had a good combo with that. And Dr. Haney and I are number crunchers too. So we love to see ROI and we love to look at statistics and we are very calculated with our marketing moves I believe, which I think has brought a lot of success.
Adam: Dr. Haney.
Dr. Haney: Yes.
Adam: That’s awesome. And Dr. Haney, when you work with Alex, I know a lot of practices don’t have like a director of marketing or somebody that has that role. Was that a difficult thing for you to get involved in or did you find it to be a breath of fresh air once you had Alex come on board?
Dr. Haney: I think prior to Alex arrival it was very frustrating because we would — we were trying to deal with marketing people that were in other states or other market and they didn’t really understand the local culture and they didn’t really, not always accessible. And Alex came in not really understanding a lot about healthcare, he knew a lot about marketing and a lot of social media, but we’re able to kind of train him on the job.
Adam: He knew a lot about lifting weights though, doctor a lot about that.
Dr. Haney: He knew a little bit about that too.
Alex: But I can still learn a few things on that.
Dr. Haney: But he has had the time to dig in and really learn inside and out the SPC, the social patient center proponent of Crystal Clear. And so he, and he also has some perfectionist tendencies which is really needed. Sometimes our existing website that we had for years was updated by Crystal Clear but still had a lot of little things we wanted to move around and tweak and then prove and modify. And so he started working on that to make our website very, very modern and accurate and easier to navigate.
Alex: Yeah. And I think that’s a really important point you just made there too doctor is the fact that — and listeners, no matter which vendor you use for your marketing or your CRM or your practice management, it’s really important that you have a very close relationship with them. As Dr. Haney mentioned, one of the struggles that practices have is getting that local flavor and one of the things companies like Crystal Clear has and other large companies in the industry alongside with us as well too, the challenge we have is we really love having the Alexs of the world work directly with us because it’s a really good combination and it makes it very, very effective. So I’d highly recommend that you guys consider looking at somebody locally that can help you in your practice on a regular basis as you work to expand your footprint in your regional markets. It makes a huge difference. Dr. Haney, I wanted to ask you, have you noticed in the last five to 10 years a difference or have patients evolved in the last five to 10 years in how you treat and care for them?
Dr. Haney: Yeah, definitely. The patients who are much more concern — customer service oriented. I mean, they’re not, yeah, I can remember the days when the answer was very simple. You walk in a patient room and say, “How did you find us?” And they said, “Well, my neighbor sent me, or my doctor sent me, or I saw your TV ad.” And it’s not that way anymore. The past several years it has evolved into a paragraph of an answer. It’s “Well, my veins had been bothering me. And so I did a Google search and I found your practice, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that.
So then I went and asked my doctor and he said, absolutely there’s what you need to go. I still wasn’t sure. So I talked to my neighbor and she said, “Oh yeah, he worked on my veins.” And so then I went to the grocery store and the lady there said, “Oh yeah, he worked on my veins too.” And then I went to Facebook and I found your ad again and it’s, yeah, how do you track that? Our system gives you one possible answer. So is it going to track back to the TV ad, my page or the Google search or the doctor referral or whatever? And people don’t come by one touch anymore. They need to be approached in many different directions.
Adam: It’s so amazing how many people think it’s about one thing, so often people always ask us, you know, “Adam, you know, what’s the one thing that would determine success or failure in anybody’s digital marketing initiative?” And the most important thing obviously is you get to care about it. I mean, we talk about that all the time and it’s obvious that you and Alex cared deeply about it, Dr. Haney. But the other thing is, it’s all those components you mentioned have to work together in synergy, otherwise it’s like a great song, if drummers playing off time and the guitar players playing in a different place and the singer is singing off key, it’s not very pleasant to listen to, but when you go see a band that actually puts it all together, it’s like magic. Right?
Dr. Haney : That’s right.
Adam: And the same thing is true when you’re actually running the orchestra of your practice or the orchestra of your business, everybody has to be singing and doing and playing their part very effectively. Alex, I want to ask you, could be being involved in technology for so long, what big changes do you see coming on the technology side over the next five years?
Alex: Man, I always try to put myself in the consumers’ shoes because if I was going to a doctor’s office or something, I would prefer to be online. I would get on my phone. I mean, things are shifting that way. I think more and more every day I think the easier it is to make an appointment or to contact somebody. So whether it’s just messaging, I mean, I spend hours just online, whether it’s through Facebook or Instagram people have messages, asking about services or trying to schedule appointments. So I think it’s — actually I know it’s definitely shifting that way. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s very important to have a phone, but so people can call. But I think it’s going to — I think it’s shifting a lot more online and people just — might be more of my generation they’re lazy and they don’t want to talk to people. They just want to message somebody. So I think we need to understand that.
Adam: You guys are lazy, you millennials. No, I’m just kidding. I actually, I love the millennials. I’ve got a couple of millennial kids and I’ve got some younger kids too I don’t even know what ages they would fall into — I’ve got a four-year-old and a 10-month-old as well too. I’ve done it twice. I don’t know if you guys know this. I’ve got a 24 year old boy, a 22 year old daughter who just made me a grandfather six weeks ago. And I have a four year old boy who just turned four on the seventh, which was yesterday when we were, the day before we were recording this and then a 10 month old.
And it’s amazing, even the differences between my two generations of kids, how quickly they adapt to technology. So I hear you, Alex. I think more and more people want to move online, talk to their doctors’ online video conference online. It’s going to be interesting to see how it all changes over the next several years. Dr. Haney, what is your, when treating people and veins, what is your favorite treatment or what is the favorite part of what you do daily in the practice? I know you mentioned so clearly and so profoundly that you love the personal touch with the patient, which is one of the reasons why radiation was getting depressing to you. I’d love to hear a little bit about what gets you jazzed up every day when you come into the office.
Dr. Haney: Well, I really liked to be to, well, our patients come into the procedure and they’re pretty nervous about what I’m going to do to them. And as our practice has evolved and gotten more busy, but that was the initial consultation and the treatment plan is discussed with by a mid-level, a nurse practitioner or whomever knows their first meeting of me is a day I come in there to put a something in their leg, and so they’re obviously a little nervous about that sometimes. Usually they’ve seen a video of me on our website or then, okay, I’ve seen some more viewed as, or whatever.
They don’t usually not catch me completely cold Turkey, but it’s not the first. It’s usually the first time that they’ve seen me, and so if I can break that anxiety if you can get them talking about themselves and it’s often very fascinating to hear the story of their life. If you’re going to ask some broad open ended question, by the time they get finished answering it, oftentimes I’m finished with the procedure. It was very fascinating .This morning I had a — we’re in Walmart, a territory where our practices in the headquarters of Walmart and so rare to meet someone who actually knew Sam Walt. I had one this morning, this elderly gentleman was in and was talking about, he worked for Walmart for 40 years and they can see, I worked in the original store with the original Sam. I knew him 40 years ago, whatever. And to see how it’s fascinating stories and so that’s what I have had.
Adam: Yeah, so you’re really trying, so you’re trying to know who they are as people, right. Yeah. Who they are as people?
Dr. Haney: Absolutely you get an older lady and you could say tell me about your kids. Well though the procedures over with before they finish with all that because there most older ladies are so happy and enthralled to talk about their grandchildren. And so just getting to hear those stories and to figure out who you know in common or what you have in common or hobbies you have in common or whatever is very rewarding to me. And it beats-
Adam: Yeah and I think, you know what I love what I love hearing about. Yeah. Because I know when you and I have talked over in the past and you’ve shared a lot of your passion with patients, it’s a, it is about people, right? You know, even though they’re patients and they’re coming to the practice, they’ve got a problem. Every one of us has a story, right? I mean, every one of us has stories both positive and negative. And there’s actually a new hit song out called a hundred bad days or a hundred bad days leads to a hundred good stories, and a hundred good stories makes me the– what does it? Makes me the life of the party. So a hundred bad days leads to a hundred good stories and a hundred good stories makes me the life of the party. And just by being able to have people share, open up a little bit about their families and what they’re passionate about or what they’re hopeful for I would imagine definitely relieves the tension and you’re definitely very good with that.
When you think about that doctor, some doctors have a challenge with bedside manners as you know, we hear about it from time to time as well when it comes to sharing and opening up personally to your patients as well as, you know, growing your practice at the same time. Because they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Some doctors I think that they have to churn and burn to really grow their practice and others think they have to spend a little bit too much time with the patient and they have a time growing their practice. There’s typically a blend there. Do you have any information or advice that you would share with your colleagues in how you’ve tried to balance both the expansion in the high growth of Ozark Vein coupled up with your personalized touch?
Dr. Haney: I think just be yourself. Yeah, be yourself and don’t — I mean, people don’t want to always feel like they’re being sold something. If they asked me, Alex has done a great job of having all of our other aesthetic services playing on the TV in the room. And so when we’re having, we’re doing a case, there’ll be different procedures come and go and it’s amazing how often they’ll ask about it. What’s up with this EMSCULPT and saying you can get a six pack after four treatments and they open that door, I’m going to go through it obviously then I don’t need to be in there raising the subject with every patient that walks through the door.
Instead, I’ll be talking about my kids or my most recent hiking trip or some silly story about something that happened to me on the way to work. And if you can get them laughing and telling some story, making fun of my kids or telling something that’s hilarious about my millennial children, is really icebreaker. I had a you about two years ago my son who never ever has done anything wrong in his entire life. He’s been the perfect child decided he needed to just elope and disappear for four days and show up with a wife and that’s a big story that’s kind of funny. You can tell that in a way that it’ll get everybody that breaks the tension in the room and it gets them talking about that and then they’ll usually share something that’s about their kids or whatever. So I just usually I try to tell silly stories about their real life stories, but you got exaggerate a little bit of them.
Adam: Yeah and I love that by the way. The good thing about the eloping son is that it’s a heck of a lot cheaper.
Dr. Haney: We are realizing that because my daughter just got married two weeks ago and we’re appreciating the elopement a whole lot more often.
Adam: I was just going to say I wish my daughter eloped, but-
Dr. Haney: My youngest daughter watched both of them now, she has watched how stress the elopement was. There was a little shock value for a few weeks around the house. A lot of tears in my [inaudible] [00:23:08]. But it wasn’t near the drama that the wedding was and so she has declared she’s going down the path of her brother and she’d run off and get married with this guy.
Adam: That’s amazing. That’s great. Hey Alex, I got a — I’ve got one more question for you before I talk to the doc about a few more things. You know, when there’s going to be, there’s going to be marketers and people that work in practices listening to this podcast as well, not just the practitioners themselves actually tune into True To Form. I’d love for you to give some advice to marketers, maybe millennial marketers who are coming into a practice working with a more seasoned doctor. What advice can you give them to help them, A respect what has been built but B, try to push things forward as well too?
Alex: I mean, I think the easiest way to answer for me was, I mean, learn. I learned everything that I could I absorbed everything first and I wanted to be an expert on what I was promoting and what I was advertising first before I even tried to move the gauge. I mean, I came in and there was a few things I knew initially that needed to be done just from just an easy standpoint. I mean there was some social media that still needed to be created and just updated and finessed a little bit. And the website of course. So I mean those are things I could work on immediately, but I spent probably two weeks following them around and just seeing what it was. I went from selling beds to selling Botox and it was a huge change for me, but I know all about that now. I can answer the phone and speak to-
Adam: Alex. That’s your next book title.
Alex: …people anything about it.
Adam: Write this down. That’s your book title.
Alex: From Bed to Botox.
Adam: You heard it right here on True To Form folks, right here at True To Form. Alex is going to write a book, From Beds to Botox. And I’ll tell you right now, people would love that dude. They would absolutely love that. That’s amazing.
Alex: You may be on to something there, Adam.
Adam: I typically am onto something. That’s what people are always telling me. So Dr. Haney is there anything like any events or treatments or charities, etcetera or that you want to share with our listeners that you’re getting excited about?
Dr. Haney: I am very excited about — and I need to discuss this with you. I had to catch you off guard with this — we’re going to, we’re adding a third clinic that is going to be a very progressive men’s anti-aging clinic. I think it’s going to be the wave of the future and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m really excited about it. I think there’s a huge need in that area for it and I think it goes hand in hand with our aesthetics practice. And with the vein practice. I think it’s going to be something that is much needed and it will be very successful.
Adam: That’s awesome. What do — and you know what you should call the practice, From Beards to Botox.
Dr. Haney: I would like to see how that works.
Adam: I actually — so we’d not use that name, but that actually is amazingly exciting. Congratulations on your success. And is there any last words, first of all, I can’t wait to work with you on that project. That’s going to be a lot of fun. We’ll talk about that at a different time. Any last words of advice you have for the next generation of doctors who are thinking of themselves, “You know what, I’m going to hang up a shingle and start my own practice.”
Dr. Haney: I think get good people. People that are 100% solid on the practice and the concept and they’re going to be your best advocates. I think as far as marketing goes, you got to learn, you need to know about it. I think you’re not ever going to be successful if you 100% delegate it off to somebody else that don’t understand the basics of how it works yourself. And I think that’s been one of the most expensive lessons I’ve learned, because I’ve gone through a number of marketing companies and never felt like it was ever under control, anywhere near as good as it is with Alex. But I don’t think Alex could have been as effective in what he did if I didn’t already know the basics of getting him started. You touched on a minute ago about him being a millennial. I mean, I think everybody should have a millennial, it’s a wonderful thing. These millennials are great.
Adam: That by the way, that is such great advice, the millennial generation they’re a lot quicker. They’re faster in so many ways and they can see things in the future that are coming quicker than some of us can even see. So Dr. Haney and Alex, thank you so much for joining me. I am Adam DeGraide with True To Form. Next week who knows who we’re going to have. It’s going to be exciting, fun, fresh. It might be me, it might be Tim. You never know. If Tim, you know, every once in a while Tim calls me and says, “Hey, they have a Jack Hammer outside my office. Can you pull the podcast off?” Not a problem. Every once in a while, call me and say, “Hey, I forgot how to log onto the Internet. Do you mind taking it over?” Not a problem. So it’s Adam DeGraide here for True To Form. Thank you so much for listening. We can’t wait to have you next. Enjoy your day, everyone. Thank you.
Moderator: Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of True To Form. To learn more about your podcast sponsor, Crystal Clear, visit crystalcleardm.com. Also be sure to subscribe to the show on all your favorite music apps, including iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, and tune in to stay up to date with the newest episodes. Thank you for listening.
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